Circle The Drain
by frays
Summary: When everything is gone, there's nowhere to go but down / Isabelle-centric / Level two, Part two of the Coppertone Wars "Twelve Days of Christmas" challenge


**Disclaimer | I do not own The Mortal Instruments**

**Summary | **

**Authors Note | For level two, part two of Coppertone Wars "Twelve Days of Christmas" challenge. **

.:.

Everywhere Isabelle looked was filled with emptiness, so hollow that it twisted inside of her like a rusted knife and staying inside of her. She felt sick; she felt weaker than she had ever had in her life.

Demon poisoning and being stabbed were paper cuts as compared to the pain she felt, so hollowing that she felt as though it were true physical pain, a pain that no amount of torture or anguish could ever measure to.

She wanted so badly to feel nothing as she had learned to her entire life, but the wall of crumbling pain was falling on top of her, crushing her, tearing her apart and suffocating her in a way that made her feel as though she couldn't stand. Her too-tall heels wobbled, and she fell to the floor, shivering badly in the too-tight leather dress, boots, and jacket that felt to be suffocating her.

She ripped her jacket off despite how cold she was, the black ink on her arms exposed to the light of her room, but she didn't feel the chill of the room. She felt everything; she felt nothing. She felt like a piece of brittle glass, already cracked but somehow not yet completely shattered.

She wanted to scream, but in the end all she could do was cry.

Crying wouldn't bring Alec back to life.

.:.

With time, everyone around Isabelle slowly healed themselves, learning how to live without the blue-eyed shadowhunter to keep them sane, simply because they didn't _need_ Alec to balance them out in the way Isabelle needed her older brother–Jace had Clary to keep him even, and he had Clary to erase the memories of Alec's life so that he could go on with his life.

After a year, Magnus fell away from his depression and slowly healed as well, throwing himself into his magic and parties, spending time with people whenever they were near so that he would have someone by him to anchor him. For the warlock, it was nearly as hard as it was for Isabelle–Alec had died with the belief Magnus resented him for trying to give him mortality; Magnus was never able to kiss the shadowhunter before his life was taken by the demon.

For months, Isabelle had distracted herself–she threw herself headfirst into trying to find the demon who had killed her brother, spending months hunting him down and planning on the most painful way to kill him, needing to kill the hellish creature in a way so painful as the pain she received from the death of her brother.

When the blue-green demon was slaughtered, Isabelle truly had nothing.

She was alone without a single distraction–she was alone and vulnerable to her grief, grief that attacked her the moment she let her mind go back to her older brother, and go forwards to a life without him.

The life without her brother was an empty tunnel.

.:.

She would be eighteen the next day.

The sky was black, and the beautiful shadowhunter wasn't sure whether it was late night or early morning, or possibly the time where the morning blended with the night in a harmony of blackness, empty as her heavy heart felt constantly now.

She pulled on her thigh-high leather boots, eight inches high exactly, and slipped into a stretchy black dress, slipping her arms into her leather jacket.

She wrapped her fingers around the hilt of a knife, then a seraph blade, sliding them both into her belt as she opened the door to her room inside the institute, slipping into the halls with agile steps no human could achieve in the thin heels so high, making hardly a sound as she slipped through the institute.

She walked past Alec's old room, a room now deserted. It made her glad, in a sense, that his room wouldn't be occupied by another Nephillim–she hated the thought of someone taking her brothers place in their hearts with a fever, and hated the idea of her family forgetting Alec.

There was an irony to the thought, seeing as Isabelle was running away now to escape the place that reminded her more of her dead brother than anything ever had.

_When a shadowhunter reaches adulthood at the age of eighteen, they must decide whether to declare their allegiance to the clave and become full clave members, or leave their life behind for some reason._

She chose the latter, and let the cool air hit her light cheeks as she threw the gates open and walked out the doors of the institute, away from everything she had ever known and to the life of mystery.

She was scared to live with only the mundanes and downworlders, but she didn't know if she'd be able to live with the loss of her brother echoing in her mind constantly.

To her, the walls of the Clave were made of Alec, and she couldn't stay inside the sanctuary without thinking of her brother constantly–she would copy Magnus, and refuse to step inside the institute, too many memories of her brother alive and present within the walls.

Leaving the institute wasn't enough–everything about the way of life she used to lead reminded her painfully of her brother, and she didn't know how she would be able to stand continuing the way of life she had known since she was a little girl.

She could never go back; she wasn't strong enough to turn around.

.:.

Her dark red lipstick stained the crystal glass of vodka, the clear liquid tasting bitter as it slipped against the beautiful girls tongue and fell down her throat, doing nothing to dizzy Isabelle's mind. Mundane alcohol was too weak; she needed some sort of warlock powder to truly numb her mind, but it would be too hard to attain without the connections she had had when she was a shadowhunter.

The hotel room smelled like smoke, sweat, and the traces of ink that scented her skin from months ago, still as vibrant as they had been when she ran away from the clave. She tried not to cough as the scent of the smoke filled her lungs painfully, lining the room in a grey haze that seemed to be a cloud, thin yet making her feel dizzy.

There was a man she didn't know lying nude in the bed, one of the dozen men she had seduced into using as a distraction from Alec and now memories of her old life, the images of her extended family in the Conclave a ghost haunting her always. The men who she found in beds scattered along San Fransisco were only momentary distractions from her pain, a pain that killed her, yet a pain not strong enough to let herself kill herself.

Death would be easy; death would be simple.

She let the last of the mundane alcohol pass her lips and put on her leather jacket, the same one she had worn since she was fifteen, and slid in her heels four-inches too high, heels that made her look more like a prostitute than a beautiful girl, strong and fearless.

She was merely a shell of the girl she used to be, more of a woman than a girl now, and only wore a reflection of the brave face she used to have painted on her darkly alluring features.

.:.

She didn't see the boy with the curly hair and glasses until she was nineteen and wasted away, living on either the streets or at the houses of an odd man who would take the beautiful girl home with them, using her as an object for simply her body and tossing her aside the next day, granting her no liberties, letting her not forget all that she had left behind for even a moment.

She had not forgot about her extended family of Nephillim and wolves, the odd vampire the person who, after Alec, plagued her mind the most. The daylighter flickered about her mind every time she kissed a man and he would kiss her softly, something that happened scarcely.

She didn't know how to speak when she saw him; she didn't need to.

He opened his arms, stronger than she remembered, and the nineteen-year-old girl let herself fall weakly into the vampire's arms, her body shaking with a sort of relief and anguish, unused to the comforting touch of a soul who cared for her, a soul who wouldn't use her body and then throw her away onto the streets.

She let her eyes close, the scent of him overwhelming her–or rather, lack thereof.

She wonder how his skin was scented while he was human, but she had ignored him while he was a human because he made himself too easy to fade away or disappear, never taking a stand for himself until he was finally turned to a daylighter, the same day she became even more jealous of the redheaded girl.

She couldn't help but wonder if her absence had caused Simon to love Clary again, and caused Clary to finally accept the nerdy boys unrequited love.

She knew if it were true, she'd shatter completely.

"How has Clary been?" Isabelle asked ruefully, and the daylighter looked surprised that those were first words through the beautiful girls lips at their reunion.

"She's married to Jace now."

Simon's words had a pause of them, a flicker of some emotion close to sadness or pain, a jealousy that the extent of what she had known about the vampire proved. He was jealous of Jace as he always had been, and he loved Clary as he did before he met Isabelle.

Her absence was all it took to let her life slip away, caught by the cold hands of jealousy, love, and the disparity of being truly alone, truly broken.

.:.

Isabelle Sophia Lightwood had never learned to swim.

She had avoided going to lakes and the ocean when she was young–even when she was small she felt as though she had to live under the pretense that she was fearless, that she was perfect.

If her family knew she were scared of drowning, she would be seen as less untouchable, and she would be taken down a step from the throne she sat on, always feeling safe or secure.

The only person who knew her fear was Alec, and he had always helped her avoid being near water, wanting to keep his little sister safe from the fear she'd never admit. He knew she only admitted a few fears or insecurities to herself, and he knew who she was or the way she functioned.

In life, there always had to be someone beside you who understood and stabilized you, someone that knew everything about her and knew how to protect the secrets she held so dearly, yet secrets she needed to let show to someone beside herself to keep her sanity.

Looking down into the river underneath the short cliff, she didn't see a reason to be scared of water–the water would end her sorrows, and the water would still her emptiness, grief, or jealousy.

The water below her would end her anguish, and make her calm and still for once in her life.

She took a step towards the end of the ledge, and then another.

The ground was too thin to allow her to step back–the ground would not allow her to put her full weight onto a single foot and save herself from the death she now dreaded.

She would be gone, but she would be with Alec.

When everything is gone, there's nowhere to go but down.

She let her chocolate eyes fall closed, and she fell.

.:.

**That was **_much _**more angsty than I planned, but I didn't want to change the tone of the story at the ending.**

**Question Of The Day:**

**Should I write more for the TMI/TID fandom?**

**M**y **r**e**v**i**e**w **b**o**x **i**s **h**u**n**g**r**y**–**f**e**e**d **i**t**!**!**!**


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